


dealer of death (happiness)

by deprived



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, this a repost of my old livejournal fic bc i was rereading it and felt like it could fit here too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 15:04:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20968532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deprived/pseuds/deprived
Summary: Chanyeol stages deaths. He stages death and he stages happiness - at least at that last moment, last flicker of life. His clients are his source of income and his clients are his victims. He - he is their tool and their savior, a hand of a merciless God or whatever they believe in. Some don't believe in anything, and it's just them and the bleak world and no consolation at all. But that's where Chanyeol steps in.





	dealer of death (happiness)

Chanyeol stages deaths. He stages death and he stages happiness - at least at that last moment, last flicker of life. His clients are his source of income and his clients are his victims. He - he is their tool and their savior, a hand of a merciless God or whatever they believe in. Some don't believe in anything, and it's just them and the bleak world and no consolation at all. But that's where Chanyeol steps in.

He's an actor, a damn good one. He's their friend, their strength for the act they want to perform but are too afraid to do it by their own hand. Sometimes, if they want him to, he's their lover. Limitless consolation is what he offers, though his service is adequately priced for a luxury of being gifted with a piece of heaven on earth before being lifted out of their misery in the gentlest - or other, if wish be - way possible.

So tell me, have you ever thought of how you'd like to die?

There's nothing new about this one's eyes. They're just like the rest of them: sparked with a glint of fear, hardened by a whole lot of determination. Heartbreaking when paired with shaking hands and trembling lips, barely contained pain. He stands on Chanyeol's doorstep and wrings his tiny wrists out, eyes cast downwards, voice quiet.

Chanyeol smiles his best consolatory smile, his landmark grin tinted with all the warmth and light this crooked world can muster up, and he expects nothing less than what he gets. He observes as his magic works its way around the tight ropes of insecurity wrapped around the small frame of the person before him.

The boy loosens up and finally drops his hands to his sides. (And there are red crescents engraved into the pale skin of his wrists.)

"How much?"

Chanyeol ignores the question. Part of his business is selling kindness. "What's your name?"

"Baekhyun."

"Come in then, Baekhyun." He smiles a softer, more genuine smile this time and opens the door wider, bowing in slight invitation.

The procedure is being as casual as possible. The procedure is, in a way, to not let the client feel a procedure is being followed at all. Adjustment and personalized approach are the key.

Chanyeol's specialty is reading people and making them trust him. He can decipher everyone - anyone - and if he wishes to, it takes not much more than a snap of fingers to get into his next role and become the exact person his client wants - needs - him to be. For the right amount of money, he's willing to sell his body, mind and soul and fit himself exactly into the role that is expected of him. Fill all the gaps in another person’s crumbled world - that is, all those that can be mended by means of another human presence.

Baekhyun though, he's different. Not unique but certainly among the less common type he gets.

From the start he's shy. Insecure. Quiet. Almost as if he didn't want to be there at all, sitting on Chanyeol's comfortable couch, in his large but cozy living room, sipping red wine from a tall crystal glass.

That's enough for Chanyeol to classify him as type C.

He lets the silence linger in the air for twenty five minutes, the only sound being the humming of the air ventilator and the swishing of liquid when Chanyeol refills their glasses.

The sun is setting behind the translucent wall of glass that constitutes the West wall of the room. Baekhyun's gaze lingers there. Pretty fingers play with the hem of the glass.

"Can you do it here?" He asks suddenly, in the smallest voice Chanyeol's ever heard.

That's an unusual request but he may as well grant it. He nods.

Baekhyun shudders out a long breath. "Next week. Sunday."

"It's your choice, Baekhyun. But that's a good date. As good as any." He smiles.

The boy turns out to be a lightweight. He's gone by the time Chanyeol opens a third bottle.

But he's also a stubborn one. Most want to let out all their grievances as soon as they can - as soon as they find ears willing to listen, and Chanyeol has an excellent hearing for that - but Baekhyun has managed to seal his mouth shut for an hour and half.

He just sits there, biting his lip and curling his hands in his lap.

"I- I need to go to the bathroom," he finally says and gets up abruptly, but he wobbles on his feet and only stays upright thanks to Chanyeol's quick reflex.

"Easy, Baekhyun," he says.

That's when the first tear rolls down his cheek and once it reaches the tip of his chin, there's no stopping him and he falls over the edge and falls and falls and falls until Chanyeol's arms catch him and put him gently back down on the couch.

He kneels in front of the crying boy. His soft dark curls fall over his eyes, his eyelashes shine with tears, his lips tremble. Chanyeol's heart goes out to him.

"Come, Baekhyun. Tell me everything that's eating you up. You don't have to hold back with me. I'll be your best friend and I'll be all yours. Tell me what I can do and I promise, I will do everything for you."

The game's on.

Baekhyun caves in with the first touches. He's like a frail distant figure of ice that melts under Chanyeol's fingertips when he takes a gentle hold of his chin and forces the boy to look him in the eyes.

(It's one of his many techniques, the technique of hypnosis.)

He brushes his thumbs against the sharp plains of the boy's cheeks, presses them against the seam of his thin pretty lips, as if urging him to speak and spill all the secrets that weigh him down. His hands contrast sharply with the small of Baekhyun's face and it feels almost as if he were comforting a child.

"Tell me what you want, Baekhyunnie," he murmurs.

And Baekhyun tells him - shows him - what he already knew the boy needed. He leans in and shivers into their kiss, shivers all the way from his lips down to his shoulders and it's good that he's sitting because his knees feel so so weak right now.

Chanyeol returns the kiss with such a calculated firmness and such well measured desire that it feels almost real.

That night he pretends he needs Baekhyun as much as Baekhyun needs Chanyeol.

The boy is still asleep when Chanyeol wakes up. Thin blades of sunshine cut through the darkness and lay in flickering strips across his torso and slender neck, not quite reaching and disturbing the shade falling over his face. It's a touch of life on what is already claimed by death, Chanyeol thinks faintly, and feels the tiniest prick of guilt seeping into his veins but blinks it away.

He steals life, yes, but he also deals happiness. He reminds himself that while thinking of Baekhyun's tear-stricken face twisted in the most crooked of smiles while he made love to him in ways he's sureno one has ever made to the boy before.

Baekhyun asks Chanyeol if he can stay at his place until Sunday. Chanyeol doesn't usually do that - it's a little risky to keep his clients at his personal apartment, with the neighbors and all that - but Chanyeol sees the way Baekhyun looks out his living room window, sitting on the floor with his knees pulled up and chin resting in the crook between them. He sees the pleading in his eyes.

"Sure," he replies.

Baekhyun is a C and Chanyeol knows what Cs need the most - affection. He doesn't say that - doesn't really want to talk about what he wants and why he wants it - but Chanyeol reads loneliness in the way his body craves the simplest of touches. And so that's what Chanyeol gives him.

It's not just sex though. It's letting the other fall asleep with his head nuzzled into his chest. It's whispering sweet nothings that hardly sound like lies in Chanyeol's own ears (Baekhyun isbeautiful - Chanyeol is not lying when he worships his body), it's drinking together until a small smile drifts onto Baekhyun's pale lips and his shoulders relax and there's no more tension in his body, it's watching the stars from the living room and talking about everything - anything that doesn't really matter, at least, because Baekhyun avoids serious talk like fire.

Chanyeol doesn't ask unnecessary questions and Baekhyun doesn't either. It's a little peculiar because most of his clients want to learn about his profession. They ask about the other clients. They ask about the ways and the possibilities and how Chanyeol feels about it, how he lives with it.

They also usually want to settle all details in advance but Baekhyun makes no such move, as if Sunday didn't exist.

Finally, it's on Chanyeol to bring it up. He does so on their last night.

They're lying in bed, both drenched in sweat and panting, and the rush of endorphins paints the prettiest of smiles on the boy's face - a slight twitch of the corners of his lips, a lack of frown on his forehead, the closed eyelids. He's so, so pretty. Chanyeol feels a little sad that his beauty is not meant to last. A little regretful that he won't get to kiss those lips anymore after tomorrow.

He wonders how cruel the fate must have been to Baekhyun to make him stumble upon Chanyeol's doorstep.

"So tell me, have you ever thought of how you'd like to die?" He murmurs into his collarbones.

Sunday falls on 27th November. Chanyeol finds it the most peculiar birthday he has ever heard. But he doesn’t take his birthdays off.

"Please, please, please," Baekhyun mewls and it's such an intoxicating mantra to Chanyeol's ears, it makes him drive eve harder into the small body underneath him.

He sucks on Baekhyun's neck, will probably leave a hickey there, one that will fade into one huge bruise later anyways, along with the many previous ones.

Baekhyun fists his pretty long fingers in the back of Chanyeol's shirt and arches his back. His eyes are screwed shut in pain and pleasure and desperation and exhilaration that all flow free in rivulets of tears down his cheeks and oh god if this is the end of the world then let it be, just please, let it last a little longer-

But then Chanyeol tears his mouth away from his neck and seals them over Baekhyun's lips so forcefully that it leaves him breathless. And then he asks. "Are you ready?"

And Baekhyun doesn't know, so he doesn't answer. Chanyeol takes that as a yes and slams his hips forward hard, harder - he's never been this violent before - and it almost sends Baekhyun over the edge but it also hurts, fuck. Baekhyun chokes when a particularly vicious thrust shoves his body up the mattress.

But then he feels Chanyeol's hands on his throat, easily fitting around his neck. He opens his eyes in surprise and looks at the face hovering over him - and oh he almost forgot why he wanted it here, in Chanyeol's living room, at this time, when the sun sets in the same way it did the first time he entered this room, but now that he sees the hues of pink and orange reflected on Chanyeol’s face and dancing over the room behind him, he remembers exactly why.

It's a morbidly beautiful view.

The moment Chanyeol's hands start to close in on his throat he screams. "Stop! Stop, stop, stop it!" He trashes wildly trying to break free, to pull Chanyeol's hands away, but even if the digging of his nails on Chanyeol's wrists draws blood the other doesn't notice in the haze of lust and pleasure and adrenaline high.

"Chanyeol," he chokes.

The sound of his name brings Chanyeol to his senses. His hips never stop but his hands do and oh god,Baekhyun is glad. "The safeword, Baekhyun. Do you want to use the safeword?"

Baekhyun doesn't use the safeword. He doesn't say a thing but only continues to cry and for a second there's this little bit of hesitation at the back of Chanyeol's mind but then he pushes it away and instead leans down until his lips meet Baekhyun's. They stay there as his hands wrap themselves tighter around the pliant flesh underneath his fingers, and doesn’t stop, never stops until all sounds die and all movement freezes.

Chanyeol stages deaths. He stages death and he stages happiness. He is an actor and he plays his role until the curtain falls.


End file.
